


Hollow Seas that Rage

by TwoDrunkenCelestials



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Archivist!Jon, Lonely!Jon, M/M, Touch-starved Jon, implied Lonely!Martin, sad but hopeful ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 12:51:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19974388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoDrunkenCelestials/pseuds/TwoDrunkenCelestials
Summary: In the end, it's not Martin who falls to the Lonely, who embraces it like the oldest of friends, but Jon.Monsterhood has become an easy coat for him to wear.





	Hollow Seas that Rage

In the end, it's not Martin who falls to the Lonely, who embraces it like the oldest of friends, but Jon. These past number of months- since his coma, are the loneliest he's ever been. No one trusts him, no one can, and he doesn't blame them. His humanity, slowly worn away, his few ties to what was _Jonathan Sims_ drifting so far, leaving him drowning in an ocean of weight and fog and _alone_. Monsterhood has become an easy coat for him to wear.

The Eye is ever watchful, but that doesn't help. One can be seen and still be alone. What greater cruelty is there then being known so thoroughly, then abandoned? 

First Martin, then everyone else. Even Elias, who sought to use him so, pushed him through flames and worms and darkness, seems to have pulled away, left Jon stumbling too far off the path. 

Jon honestly doesn't know when it happened, the slow creep of fog surrounding him, the ice that's crept into his veins and slowly frozen his heart into something that Jon doubts can be thawed. 

People leave him alone, not just by their choice anymore, but by his as well. It's easier, a quick rip of the bandaid, rather then the slow torture of watching them pull away. It's easy to get lost for days in his statements, or walking the streets searching for another person touched by the powers to feast upon. 

The Eye still gets fed, still gets to hear and learn, so Jon doesn't think it minds too much. The Lonely gets fed too, those poor bastards disappearing after into a torment worse then Jon's nightly tour of their dreams. This way, he figures, no one will find out. No one will be able to rat him out to Martin or his assistants.

Not that they're much of a help these days, mostly loud and frustrating when they interrupt his long silences. Daisy is looking worried sure, but she is having the most trouble with the low fog that's taken permanent residence in the Archives. The other two, from what Jon can tell, are struggling too, but they stay away from him, conscious or not of why.

It's honestly a surprise that Peter Lukas hasn't noticed the extra bit of the Lonely creeping in. Or, perhaps, he considers himself it's origin, so high and mighty as the Interim Head of the Institute. Foolish, but if it keeps the man away, Jon is okay with it. He still, despite at least partially sharing a patron, doesn't like the Lukas, his experience tainted by past experiences and the grasp he still has on Martin.

Jon may well be on the way to burying his feelings for the man, but it does not mean that he wants Peter Lukas taking what belongs to the Eye, to the Archives. Jon is still the Archivist, still serving his first master as best he can these days. Perhaps, that will be enough for Elias, for the Watcher's Crown, whatever that may be. He does hope so. A world full of Knowing and Seeing? It sounds like bliss, so long as he can wrap himself in a shield of _Alone_ , so he can never be hurt again.

He is, ultimately surprised when it is not Peter Lukas or an upset Elias that comes to see him, but Martin. Jon can sense the loneliness seeping off him like a blanket, a call given to be rejected. He answers with his own little tap of _welcomewarningleave_. Martin flinches. 

It's been many months since Jon has seen him. He smiles and it's bland, distant. Hardly like any of the Jons Martin has known and found affection for. The expression might even cut a bit too deep, judging by Martin's soft murmured _no_.

"Jon, what- what's _happened_ to you?" 

Martin sounds distraught. Jon only finds a little warmth in his heart to care, and instead tilts his head to study the other man. He notices the way the powers touch Martin, the Eye, the Lonely, and strangely, the Web. Those lines are fraying though, and Beholding's gaze isn't as heavy on Martin anymore. 

It reminds Jon of one of his grandmother's old shawls, worn through, but loved. It was one of the few things he had space to keep when the old woman died. He really ought to throw it out, sentimentality a useless thing for him these days.

"What does it look like?" Jon asks, holding his arms out and gesturing to his office, and by extension, the rest of the Archives. "I found myself another patron. One with such cold comforts that even the Choke cannot get me." 

Martin looks close to tears, the saltwater welling at the corners of his eyes. Jon wants to wipe them away, enjoy them, but he isn't honestly sure what a touch will do to him these days. It's been so long that Jon thinks it would feel scalding on his skin, even if Martin, too, is touched by their God. 

He doesn't miss the physicality of his humanity anymore, starved as he was for it. The chill is better, the way it washes over him like the seawater of some of his childhood wanderings.

"Why?" Martin's voice is small, weak, and he wobbles a bit until he catches himself on the edge of Jon's desk.

"Why? Why _not_ , Martin? Because it was easier to let myself drown in my knowledge, in my loneliness, in my _monsterhood_ , then suffer in the humanity I so fruitlessly clung to, hoping that people would _like_ me, or even _need_ me. No one seemed to _expect_ it of me, so I threw it away. I trusted you, _tried_ to hold on, honest, but the waves kept stealing my breath until I could do naught but _drown_ myself beneath them like the good little _sacrifice_ I am."

Jon's chest is heaving and he's angrier, more fired up then he has been in months. His eyes sting with the hot, wet tears that he thought he had buried under the ice around his heart.

It's frustrating. He thought he was past this stupid flood of emotions that's trying to push its way back into his chest. Thought he was past what he felt for Martin. Thought that after all that, he could be left alone, finally.

The way Martin looks at him is heartbreaking. Shouldn't affect him, should _please_ him. 

It doesn't. 

Martin's very presence has put a crack in the wall around Jon and Jon is _not_ pleased. So, as Martin goes to open his mouth, to speak, to plead, to _apologize_ , Jon cuts him off.

" _No_ , listen here. You may have done it with supposedly good intentions, but you still did it, kept yourself away at the behest of a man who would tear apart these Archives if he could. Kept away from me, who woke, lost in a world that had moved on, left me behind to mourn and be blamed for everything simply because I was in a _coma_. Suddenly, I was a _monster_ , a proper one, with urges made stronger and no one to keep me tethered. What _happens_ when you leave that alone? Can anyone really be expected to fight against the powers that will consume and consume and consume us, leave us hollow and hungry if we don't feed them?"

Jon's rant is long and cruel, the fire in his chest too warm, an awful thing. He was doing fine, just _fucking fine_ before, before-

"And who knows? This might have been in the plan all along. Break the Archivist, push him into whatever is most _monstrous_ and _useful_ to his masters?"

His tirade stops and Jon is panting and Martin is standing over him, clutching his wrists tightly, thumbs rubbing soothing circles where they sit. He wants to cry, feels emptied of everything he had buried under the ice. 

He _does_ cry.

It's still there, the ice. The walls are thinner now, but standing all the same. He can't bring himself to pull away from the touch, the gentleness, his first actual kind human contact in a long time. He can barely hear, the fog surrounding them and quieting the world into near silence. Jon isn't sure who called it, not really. He isn't sure it matters.

All that matters is that there is instant relief, just knowing that it's only him and Martin in this place, safe and cradled from everything.

He loses himself for a few moments, burying his head in his arms, trying to find the peace and detachment this place brings to him. 

It doesn't entirely work, Jon returning to his senses, with Martin's arms tight around him. He doesn't feel detached per say, but he does feel more peaceful. Martin is murmuring words into his ear, soft and only for him, intimate in an embrace already so. Jon only catches about half of them, promises and apologies and _plans_.

It's _those_ that rouse Jon out of his stupor, the Archivist sliding into the rest of the spaces between his ribs, Beholding in a place of Forsaken. It's a quiet hunger, and Jon listens close, knowing a statement, a _meal_ , when he hears it.

The touch hurts less now, the cool of their bodies and this place making it feel less like a fire and more like a cool cloth upon his skin. In a strange fit of melancholy and hope, Jon rests his head upon the broad arms encircling him and sighs, delicate as a butterfly's wing, 

"Thank you for finally seeing me, Martin."


End file.
